Military Ethics and Virtues

This book examines the role of military virtues in modern armies.

Most militaries cling to traditional interpretations of military virtues – such as
honor, courage, and loyalty – yet these may no longer be practical in modern
conflicts. In the current understanding of these virtues there is, for example, little
which regulates the conduct of military personnel towards those they are sup-
posed to be protecting, nor do they take into account the new constraints military
personnel face, imposed by critical public opinion and media coverage. These
traditional virtues are mainly beneficial to colleagues and the military organiza-
tion, not to outsiders such as the local population. As a result, troops trained for
combat sometimes experience difficulty in adjusting to the less aggressive ways
of working needed to win the hearts and minds of local populations after major
combat is over. It can be argued that today’s missions call for virtues that are
more inclusive than the traditional ones, which are mainly about enhancing mili-
tary effectiveness, but a convincing case can be made that a lot can already be
won by interpreting these traditional virtues in different ways. This volume
offers an integrated approach, dealing with the most important of the traditional
military virtues, exploring their possible relevance and suggesting new, more
inclusive ways of interpreting them, adjusted to the military tasks of the twenty-­
first century.
The book will be of much interest to students of military ethics, philosophy,
war and conflict studies in general.

Peter Olsthoorn is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Netherlands Defence

Academy, Breda.
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Military Ethics and Virtues
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Peter Olsthoorn
Military Ethics and Virtues
An interdisciplinary approach for the
21st century

Peter Olsthoorn
First published 2011
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Contents

Acknowledgments x

1 Virtue ethics and the military 1

Today’s restraints for military personnel  1
Virtue ethics  3
Duty-­based ethics  5
Old virtues and new tasks  6
Overview of this book  8

2 Honor 10
Introduction: conventional ethics  10
The problems of stressing the right intention  12
What honor is  13
The Roman honor ethic  16
The honor ethic criticized: honor as a form of self-­interest  19
Democratic honor and the quiet virtues  22
The judicious and the impartial spectator  24
Honor in our day: the Stoic view  26
Honor and the military ethic  29
Economy and autonomy in the military  30
Honor as social cohesion  32
Honor’s drawbacks  35
Possible solutions to these drawbacks  38
Conclusion  40

3 Courage 44
Introduction  44
The ethicist’s view on courage  44
The scientific view on courage  47
How moral courage relates to physical courage  49
viii   Contents
Moral courage and the military  51
How important is cohesion?  53
Cultural differences  57
Discontinuities in the Western tradition  61
Conclusion  63

4 Loyalty 66
Introduction  66
A gray virtue?  67
Group loyalty and loyalty to principle  69
Our obligations to strangers  71
Wide and narrow circles; universalistic ambitions vs. group
loyalty  74
Intentions and consequences  75
Thick and thin moralities in Afghanistan  78
A changing profession  81
Organizational loyalty and professional loyalty  83
Comparing the military ethic: oaths and codes  85
Which loyalty, and to whom?  86
What is to be done?  88
Conclusion  91

5 Integrity 93
Introduction  93
Integrity as a special kind of loyalty  94
Integrity as loyalty to yourself: a very short genealogy  95
Problems with integrity as loyalty to personal principles  98
Definitions of integrity within the military  102
Integrity as upholding personal principles and the military  104
Conclusion  106

6 Respect 109
Introduction  109
Respect, self-­respect, dignity, honor, and humiliation  111
Honor as a ground for action  116
Humiliation and terrorism: the global level  119
Humiliation and insurgency: the local level  121
Explaining (not excusing) disrespectful behavior: the situational
view  124
What is to be done?  127
Conclusion  130
 Contents   ix
7 Conclusion 132
The moral standing of the military  132
Does educating virtues work?  134
Rules and outcomes  136
Honor one more time  139

Notes 141
References 157
Index 169
Acknowledgments

The chapters on honor, courage, and integrity are partly based on earlier work
published in Routledge’s Journal of Military Ethics. The chapter that deals with
loyalty draws on a paper presented in 2008 at the conference New Wars and New
Soldiers: Ethical Challenges in the Modern Military (organized by the Centre
for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne), and that
will be published by Ashgate as a book chapter, titled “Loyalty and profession-
alization in the military,” in a volume called New Wars and New Soldiers: Mili-
tary Ethics in the Contemporary World (eds. Jessica Wolfendale and Paolo
Tripodi). I am grateful for Ashgate’s permission to reuse some of the material of
that chapter. Also, I am very much indebted to my colleagues Twan Hendricks
and Harry Kirkels for improving the English of the manuscript, and to Maarten
Rothman and the reviewers of Routledge for their useful comments.
1 Virtue ethics and the military

In recent years, a number of military historians have brought forward the thesis
that the West, since the days of the ancient Greeks, has its own specific way of
waging war, branded the Western Way of War by one author (Hanson 1989, 2002),
which has a number of characteristics that make it both bloody and successful.
Supposedly, at the basis of its victories are organization, discipline and, most of
all, a lack of restraint (other than, at times, the distinction between combatants and
non-­combatants). Some hold that it is mainly by these characteristics that Western
militaries, from the Greek phalanxes that battled Persian forces at Marathon in
490 bc to the colonial wars European powers fought in more recent times, have
brought carnage to their non-­Western adversaries with minimal losses. In contrast,
the non-­Western tradition – more widespread in both time and, at least until
recently, space – is purportedly a lot less organized and often limited by, for
instance, rituals and taboos that greatly increase the chances of surviving combat.
Yet, there are those who believe that it is as a consequence of these self-­imposed
limitations that, in the past at least, militaries belonging to this tradition in general
have lost their battles when they fought more ruthless Western armed forces.

Today’s restraints for military personnel

If ever there was such an identifiable Western tradition (see for a critique Lynn
2003), today this dichotomy between Western and non-­Western ways of war
seems to be a lot less straightforward. As has been mentioned in numerous other
introductory chapters, for most militaries in the West the core tasks changed
radically following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the reduced risk of
a major conflict, and shifted from the conventional task of national defense to
the handling of international crises in its broadest sense, ranging from humani-
tarian missions to regular warfare. At a time when the capacity for destruction is
greater than ever, these new operations, even if they on occasion effectively boil
down to traditional warfare, often require a lot of restraint on the side of Western
military personnel. This is, in fact, considered to be one of the defining charac-
teristics of what has actually been coined the New Western Way of War by
another author (Shaw 2005). Not too long ago, US soldiers and marines in Iraq,
for instance,
2   Virtue ethics and the military
continue[d] to report being in threatening situations where they were unable
to respond due to the Rules of Engagement (ROE). In interviews, Soldiers
reported that Iraqis would throw gasoline-­filled bottles (i.e., Molotov cock-
tails) at their vehicles, yet they were prohibited from responding with force
for nearly a month until the ROE were changed. Soldiers also reported they
are still not allowed to respond with force when Iraqis drop large chunks of
concrete blocks from second story buildings or overpasses on them when
they drive by. Every group of Soldiers and Marines interviewed reported
that they felt the existing ROE tied their hands, preventing them from doing
what needed to be done to win the war.
(Mental Health Advisory Team IV 2006: 13)

Clearly, in this case, what perhaps makes some sense on a policy level borders
on the incomprehensible on the level of the individual soldier.
At the same time, however, such accounts are illustrative of the fact that in
today’s operations there is, as a rule, an asymmetry not only regarding the
amount of military might of the respective parties, but also in the methods
employed and, more specifically, the amount of restraints imposed on military
personnel who have to do their jobs under the scrutinizing eye of politicians, the
media, and the general public. That is not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, we
expect military personnel to uphold high moral standards even when that scruti-
nizing eye is not present. Without too much exaggeration, we could with some
plausibility claim that the combined forces of law, politics, an increased moral
sensitivity, extensive media coverage, and public opinion, both at home and
abroad, not only pose considerable limitations on Western troops, but, notwith-
standing the fact that these factors do not always work in the same direction, to a
certain extent also help troops to make true their expressed ambition (that is, by
some members of militaries) to be “a force for good.”
As far as public opinion abroad is concerned, nowadays the focus is often on
winning over the local population, something that as a rule can only be reached
by, for starters, limiting the number of civilian casualties as much as possible.
Western militaries are for that reason duty-­bound to exercise self-­control when
deployed, trying to practice something now and then labeled as the “hearts and
minds approach,” that is to say: a non-­threatening style, characterized by
minimal use of force instead of overwhelming force, that is both respectful and
open with the local population (see for instance Onishi 2004; van Baarda and
Verweij 2006: 8). It should be clear that this method has an important self-­
serving aspect, too: it is thought to yield better information and more coopera-
tion from the local population, and thus, in the end, increased security for the
troops. In fact, this aspect seems to be one of the more important reasons behind
the whole enterprise. We see this two-­sidedness, for instance, in US General
Petraeus’ letter from May 10, 2007 to his troops in Iraq, in which he states that

our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human
dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right. Adherence to our values
 Virtue ethics and the military   3
distinguishes us from our enemy. This fight depends on securing the popu-
lation, which must understand that we – not our enemies – occupy the moral
high ground. This strategy has shown results in recent months.
(2007)

That there is a self-­serving element here does not take anything away from the
fact that nowadays wars are probably fought more ethically than ever, testifying
that the idea of military ethics does not necessarily amount to a contradiction in
terms.
To somewhat complicate this rosy picture, it seems that the strict limitations
on how asymmetric conflicts can be fought by Western militaries are, in
general, only to be respected to the extent that this can be done without increas-
ing the risk to own personnel; some authors have pointed out that avoiding cas-
ualties among Western military personnel is in general considered more
important than avoiding casualties among the local population (see for instance
Shaw 2005). That is the latter count for less is, it seems, perceived that way by
both the militaries and the populations at large in the West. At the same time, it
is evident that reducing the risks for Western soldiers in ways that increase the
chances of civilian casualties among the local population stands in rather stark
contrast to the universalistic ambitions behind most of today’s military
interventions.
The West’s adversaries, in the meantime, repeatedly do not live up to the
above sketched picture of the restrained, non-­Western warrior who holds his
own life dear. As a Taliban fighter of undisclosed origin remarked, “they love
Pepsi-­Cola, but we love death” (Buruma and Margalit 2004: 49). They do not
always impose restrictions on themselves, and, what’s more, by mingling with
the population take advantage of the one limitation on the use of violence that
the West has regularly (though certainly not always) subscribed to: the distinc-
tion between combatants and non-­combatants.

Virtue ethics
As an inevitable consequence of the restraints imposed on today’s Western
armed forces, for instance ethics education for the military today partly boils
down to convincing military personnel to restrain themselves, even when their
adversaries do not. Incidents in recent years have shown that the required mod-
eration does not always come naturally. There is, so it seems, a certain inclina-
tion to think that some maneuvering space is created once the opponent stops
playing according to the rules. Extra room is thought to be generated by higher
goals, which are sometimes considered to legitimize methods normally con-
sidered inhumane (see also Bandura 1999: 196; Fiala 2005). To illustrate, after
(and as a result of ) the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 we have seen
how, for instance, extracting information by using questioning methods such as
sleep deprivation, putting detainees in stress positions, and waterboarding, has
been defended by precisely such arguments. What is permissible in a specific
4   Virtue ethics and the military
case all depends, it is often thought, on the context, whereas in fact it hardly
ever does. It is, for that reason, of considerable importance to find ways to
enhance the moral sensitivity of military personnel. As laws and codes of
conduct are generally considered of limited use here (more on that below), most
of today’s militaries put their money on character building in trying to make
their soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines virtuous. As a result, and parallel to
the renewed interest over the past decades for virtues in ethics literature (which
started with Elizabeth Anscombe’s article Modern Moral Philosophy from 1958
and gained momentum with MacIntyre’s 1981 book After Virtue), in military
ethics military virtues are now more in the spotlight than they used to be (see
for instance Bonadonna 1994; Osiel 1999; Toner 2000; French 2003; Robinson
et al. 2008).
A virtue is typically described as a trait of character worth having, not to be
understood as an inherited or god-­given quality, but as something that can be
acquired, mainly through training and practice. References are often, if not
always, made to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where a virtue is defined as a
disposition of character, to be developed by finding a middle ground between
too much and too little in both feeling and doing. That idea of virtue as a mean
between the extremes of excess and defect has by now turned into one of the
better known proverbs of Western philosophy.
As far as the doing part is concerned, Aristotle stresses that virtues are
acquired by, and in fact do not exist outside, actually performing virtuous acts.
These acts should spring from a noble intention and serve a morally just cause.
This latter element was essential for Aristotle: by definition, a virtue cannot
serve an unethical end, nor can it be motivated by the desire for money or glory,
or by the wish to avoid punishment or disgrace, as virtue should be its own
reward. To give an example, courage is defined as the middle position between
recklessness and cowardice, to be developed by practicing courageous acts, and
springing from the right attitude concerning feelings of confidence and fear in
the pursuance of (and motivated by) an honorable cause.
Although virtue ethics comes in many varieties these days, this Aristotelian
view on virtues, formulated in the days of the above-­mentioned phalanx, is, for
several reasons, still pivotal in many texts on military ethics dealing with the
subject of military virtues. First of all, the idea that virtues, and thus character,
can to some extent be developed, and that one is not bound to an inherent
personality, is, of course, very appealing, and not only to the military. In addi-
tion, developing virtues is by some authors seen as the best way to prevent mis-
conduct by military personnel, it, as indicated earlier, being considered superior
to rules or codes of conduct imposed from above. The main argument these
authors offer is that these solutions are impotent when no one is around, and
lack the flexibility often thought necessary in today’s world. Finally, rules and
codes try to condition behavior, leaving less room for personal integrity (van
Iersel and van Baarda 2002). At first sight, then, there is a great deal to say in
favor of virtue ethics as being the best way of underpinning military ethics
education.
 Virtue ethics and the military   5
Duty-­based ethics
Even so, it is not all Aristotle and virtue ethics that form the basis for military
ethics today; traditionally, the military has always stressed the importance of
rules and obedience. For instance, notwithstanding their possible shortcom-
ings, most militaries try to impose standards and norms by means of rules and
codes of conduct. Besides these, there is core literature that is explicitly based,
not on virtues, but on rights, such as Michael Walzer’s works on war, without
a doubt the most influential in military ethics and required reading in many a
military ethics course. What’s more, the just war tradition Walzer stands in is
primarily founded on rights as well (although, at the same time, there are
unmistakably some consequentialist elements in both Walzer’s thinking and
the just war tradition). In addition, there are the works of Lawrence Kohlberg
and John Rawls, which are deemed important and useful for educating military
personnel (see for instance Toner 2000), especially on the topic of moral
development. Both Kohlberg and Rawls are adherents of duty-­based (or deon-
tological) ethics, and do not see much of a role for character traits. Kohlberg,
for instance, famously denounced virtue ethics as “a bag of virtues approach”
(1981).
Duty-­based ethics, to a great extent inspired by the works of Immanuel Kant,
stress the importance of universal, categorically binding moral norms. Whereas
terms like good, laudable, praiseworthy, etc., (with the focus on the actor) are
central to virtue ethics, in duty-­based ethics the emphasis is on what is wrong,
right, permitted, or obligatory (with the focus on the act). Where virtue ethics
calls for the development of good inclinations – we are virtuous when doing the
right thing gives us pleasure – duty-­based ethics asks us to follow these moral
rules against our natural (selfish) inclinations, testifying to a much more Calvin-
istic view on human nature. The best-­known example of duty-­based reasoning is
the one underlying the prohibition against the use of torture, a ban that by most
accounts should be maintained regardless of how expedient it might be not to do
so. That is, in any case, the stance a deontologist would take. (A virtue ethicist,
however, would probably highlight that the most important matter is to be, or to
become, the kind of person who would under no circumstances commit any acts
of torture, while the consequentialist could, for instance, point out that the harm
done by the use of torture outweighs the benefits.)
With this emphasis on rules and duty, this main alternative to virtue ethics by
most accounts not only lacks flexibility, but also aims at nothing more than the
ethical minimum, where virtue ethics asks for a lot more, including the kind of
supererogatory acts the military depends on. In this view, virtue ethics urges us
to do what is good, while duty-­based ethics merely asks us to refrain from doing
evil. However, this interpretation seems not entirely fair to either Kant or duty-­
based ethics. Not asking anyone to go beyond the call of duty, this main altern-
ative to virtue ethics nevertheless does demand quite a lot from military men and
women: moral duties are to be followed, not because they are imposed from the
outside and backed by sanctions, but because one accepts them by choice,
6   Virtue ethics and the military
something that requires an amount of altruism and a universalistic outlook that
in all probability is missing in not only the majority of military personnel, but
also in most people in general. As political philosopher Robert E. Goodin puts it:
“What matters more to [deontologists] are individuals’ motives and intentions. It
is not enough, for them, that the right thing be done. They also insist that it be
done, and be seen to be done, for the right reasons” (1995: 47). Most likely, it is
this altruism and universalism required by deontological, duty-­based ethics –
asking too much, not too little – that makes it in effect less suited for the military
and, for that matter, most of us. Duty-­based ethics seems to assume that knowing
what is the good thing to do suffices to motivate people to actually do what is
good.

Old virtues and new tasks

In spite of the importance of rules and codes in regulating the conduct of mili-
tary personnel, or Rawls’ and Kohlberg’s preference for duty-­based ethics, it has
time and again been argued that virtue ethics, with its emphasis on character
building, provides a better basis for military ethics than duty-­based, deontologi-
cal ethics (let alone utilitarian ethics, if it is taken to mean that precedence
should be given to considerations of expedience; see for instance Bonadonna
1994: 18), and it is this book’s main aim to shed some light on different aspects
of some of the more prominent military virtues. Although virtue ethics is what
militaries have put their faith in when it comes down to enhancing the chances
of soldiers behaving morally, this preference for steering conduct by means of
promoting certain desirable dispositions is not without any problems, yet as it
stands this is hardly ever addressed.
To begin with a minor matter: virtues and values are two things that are not
the same, yet are sometimes treated by militaries as if they were. As military
ethicist Paul Robinson puts it: virtues represent “desirable characteristics of indi-
viduals, such as courage,” while values, on the other hand, correspond to “the
ideals that the community cherishes, such as freedom” (2008: 5). For reasons of
simplicity, from now on the term virtues will be used throughout this book, as
this seems to be closest to what militaries actually mean to say, and is also in
line with the emphasis they put on character development and their choice for
virtue ethics as the basis for their ethics curricula. One likely reason for the fact
that such confusion can arise and persist, and for the fact that in general there
has been little attention for the more problematic sides of the current emphasis
on virtues within the military, is that, although much has been written on virtue
ethics, the existing literature on virtues in a military context is surprisingly
scarce.
The literature that is available often deals with one specific virtue only, such
as courage or loyalty, while broader approaches, going into the relations between
the different virtues, are relatively rare (see for an exception Toner 2000). On
top of that, texts frequently do not refer to much scholarly literature that is crit-
ical on the specific virtue they are dealing with, and are more often apologetic
 Virtue ethics and the military   7
than critical, as they mainly stress the importance of that particular virtue, and
not so much its intricacies. What’s more, the changes in the military’s wider
environment, which have led to the above-­mentioned shift from traditional tasks
to new, more complex, missions, have raised some new questions, such as: have
some virtues lost their importance, and have others perhaps gained significance?
These questions should be dealt with, as much depends on whether the actual
virtues military personnel aim for are the right ones for a particular job, and one
could expect that today, the proper virtues are not necessarily solely the more
martial ones. It appears, for instance, that the traditional military virtues are,
especially in their common interpretation, mainly beneficial to colleagues (see
also Robinson 2008: 6) and the organization, not so much to the local population
of the countries military personnel are deployed to.
This volume, to be sure, does not answer all the questions raised in the
above, but it does try to address some of them. One way of doing that would
have been, of course, to begin reflecting on, and in due course working out, a
set of more cosmopolitan virtues and values that is in line with today’s new
kind of missions (see for instance Deakin 2008a). A new set would most likely
be more about exercising restraint (probably giving a place to not so new car-
dinal virtues such as justice, temperance, and prudence) than about demon-
strating virtues such as courage, loyalty, and discipline. Such a fresh “bag” of
virtues is, however, probably not only not indispensable but also, and more
importantly so, maybe asking a bit too much, at least in the foreseeable future,
from what is, on the whole, an organization that has a relatively traditional
culture.
It is primarily for that reason that this book pursues a different course. Instead
of devising a new list of virtues from scratch, this volume attempts to identify
some of the weaknesses and downsides of the existing virtues and, as a logical
next step, addresses the question if the way the traditional virtues are interpreted
by most militaries could not be improved in light of the changes in the military’s
tasks. It is, looked at in this way, not so much the question which virtues should
be listed as important military virtues, as it is unclear in what form the traditional
ones should best be understood. Yet, what does seem clear is that, as it stands,
most militaries today cling to fairly traditional interpretations of their long-­
established virtues, which might no longer suffice in their present versions. In
this book, an attempt is made to show that there is still a place for the established
military virtues, yet that their role in today’s militaries is sometimes a cause for
some concern.
The following chapters in this volume deal with the most important of the tra-
ditional military virtues (with the possible exception of the subject of the sixth
chapter, respect, which is perhaps a somewhat less archetypical military virtue),
going into their possible relevance for today’s armed forces, and suggesting new,
and somewhat more inclusive ways of interpreting them, adjusted to the tasks of
the military in the twenty-­first century – the aim of this book is not merely to
complicate matters by raising a host of questions, but also to suggest some pos-
sible ways for improvement.
8   Virtue ethics and the military
Overview of this book
More specifically, Chapter 2, on military honor, contrasts the Roman honor
ethic, stating that honor is a necessary incentive for virtuous behavior and that it
is even something worth dying for, with today’s prevailing view which sees
honor as something obsolete and archaic and not as a legitimate motive. Despite
its diminishing role in society at large, it is argued, honor continues to have a
role in today’s militaries as an incentive in combat, but sometimes also as a
check on the behavior on both the battlefield and in modern Operations Other
Than War. Drawing on moral philosophy and military sociology alike, this
chapter also addresses some of the serious drawbacks of the military’s use of the
honor ethic in its current shape, and tries to identify some solutions to these
problems.
Chapter 3 argues that the best-­known definition of physical courage, stem-
ming from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, is, in reality, for several reasons not
very well suited for today’s military. Having done so, a short outline is given of
more “scientific” approaches to physical courage, which draw mainly on insights
offered by psychologists and military sociologists, and of the problems that are
inherent to these approaches. Subsequently, the chapter turns to a topic that is
often paid lip service to in the military, yet remains somewhat hard to pin down:
moral courage. Although both forms of courage are intertwined, they are so in a
less straightforward manner than is often thought; the way the development of
physical courage in today’s military is undertaken does not contribute much to
the development of moral courage.
Chapter 4 deals with loyalty, a “gray virtue” that can serve both good and bad
causes alike, partly depending on the form it takes: loyalty to a group (which can
range from one’s primary group to one’s country) and loyalty to a principle
(such as justice). Most militaries tend to stress the first form, which brings them
to, on occasion, reducing the risks for their own soldiers at the expense of the
local population. It could be argued, however, that the focus of loyalty for a pro-
fessional should not only be with his colleagues and organization, and the second
half of the chapter therefore addresses the question to what extent the military
ethic can be reformulated so as to incorporate the interests of the local popula-
tion somewhat more than currently is the case.
The subsequent Chapter 5 is all about a special form of loyalty, namely to
one’s own principles, which often goes under the name of integrity. Although
most militaries maintain that they consider it an important virtue, and most mili-
tary personnel see it as a prerequisite to be able to “look yourself in the mirror,”
especially to those working in the armed forces, the notion of integrity as
upholding personal values and principles is a very problematic one. For more
than one reason, outlined in this chapter, it is very well possible that the benevo-
lent role the virtue of integrity could have in a military organization – because it
is in itself one of the rare military virtues that is not geared towards military
effectiveness per se – can in fact better be played by other virtues, for example
respect.